Myanmar's Suu Kyi to skip UN meeting

Critics have called for Aung San Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Nobel peace prize.

Myanmar's national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, facing outrage over ethnic violence that has forced about 370,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh, won't attend the upcoming UN General Assembly session in New York.

The crisis over the security forces' fierce response to a series of Rohingya militant attacks is the biggest problem Suu Kyi has faced since becoming Myanmar's leader last year.

Critics have called for Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Nobel peace prize for failing to do more to halt the strife.

In her first address to the UN General Assembly as national leader in September last year, Suu Kyi defended her government's efforts to resolve the crisis over treatment of the Muslim minority.

This year, her party spokesman said she would not be attending, although he said he was unsure why.

International pressure has been growing on Myanmar to end the violence in the western state of Rakhine that began on August 25 when Rohingya militants attacked about 30 police posts and an army camp.

The attacks triggered a sweeping military counter-offensive that refugees say is aimed at pushing Rohingya out of Myanmar.

Reports from refugees and rights groups paint a picture of widespread attacks on Rohingya villages in the north of Rakhine by the security forces and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, who have put numerous Muslim villages to the torch.

But Myanmar authorities have denied that the security forces, or Buddhist civilians, have been setting the fires, instead blaming the insurgents. Nearly 30,000 Buddhist villagers have also been displaced, they say.

The UN Security Council will meet on Wednesday behind closed doors for the second time since the latest crisis erupted.

Rights groups denounced the 15-member council for not holding a public meeting. Diplomats have said China and Russia would likely object to such a move and protect Myanmar if there was any push for council action to try and end the crisis.

Meanwhile the Myanmar government has warned of bomb attacks in cities and those concerns are likely to be compounded by an al Qaeda call to arms in support of the Rohingya.

"The savage treatment meted out to our Muslim brothers ... shall not pass without punishment," al Qaeda said in a statement, according to the SITE monitoring group.

Bangladesh was already home to about 400,000 Rohingya who fled earlier conflict and many of the new refugees are hungry and sick, without shelter or clean water.

"We will all have to ramp up our response massively, from food to shelter," George William Okoth-Obbo, assistant high commissioner for operations at the UN refugee agency, told Reuters during a visit to the Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh.